Legendary cartoonist Julie Doucet spent two years in her Montreal studio producing a series of bold lino-cut prints and they are collected here in this stunning cloth edition. Doucet deftly explores themes ranging from female sexuality to fortune cookies (go figure!) and everything inbetween, all encompassed in this sharply-designed art book.
Julie Doucet is a Canadian underground cartoonist and artist, best known for her autobiographical works such as Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary.
Doucet began cartooning in 1987. Her efforts quickly began to attract critical attention, and she won the 1991 Harvey Award for "Best New Talent". Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York. Although she moved to Seattle the following year, her experiences in New York formed the basis of the critically-acclaimed My New York Diary (1999). She moved from Seattle to Berlin in 1995, before finally returning to Montreal in 1998. Once there, she released the twelfth and final issue of Dirty Plotte before beginning a brief hiatus from comics. She returned to the field in 2000 with The Madame Paul Affair, a slice-of-life look at contemporary Montreal which was originally serialized in Ici-Montreal, a local alternative weekly. At the same time, she was branching out into more experimental territory, culminating with the 2001 release of Long Time Relationship, a collection of prints and engravings. In 2004, Doucet also published in French an illustrated diary (Journal) chronicling about a year of her life and, in 2006, an autobiography made from a collage of words cut from magazines and newspapers (J comme Je). In 2007, Doucet published 365 Days, in which she chronicles her life for a year, starting in late 2002. After a long hiatus, Doucet came back to publication with Time Zone J (2022).
I've read quite a few of Doucet's works recently and I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan but I actually really enjoyed Long Time Relationship! I liked taking a look at her different works, from the portraits she created based on random photographs, to her illustrations of fortune cookie messages. And I'll admit, sometimes I just don't "get" her art (e.g. Carpet Sweeper Tales), but I do think she is a talented artist.
Some of the drawings are alright, pretty funny. This is sort of like scraps. Like releasing tracks of a dead artist, pre-released studio recorded for the sake of selling just something else. I found it kind of pointless though.
This is sort of a collection of zines and artwork, not a sustained narrative. I liked it. I liked that there was an underlying streak of cruelty that made me uncomfortable.